Hobby Lobby, WinCo set up shop in San Marcos

Bill Wechter

Electrician Carlos Valentin works Wednesday in the checkout area of a Winco Foods slated to open next month in San Marcos. The supermarket and a Hobby Lobby share a building once occupied by a Lowe's Home Improvement store in Creekside Marketplace.

Electrician Carlos Valentin works Wednesday in the checkout area of a Winco Foods slated to open next month in San Marcos. The supermarket and a Hobby Lobby share a building once occupied by a Lowe's Home Improvement store in Creekside Marketplace. (Bill Wechter)

The first WinCo Foods discount grocery store in San Diego County is set to open in October in the San Marcos Creekside Marketplace, next to a Hobby Lobby — the second in the county — that began serving customers last month.

The retailers could breathe a bit of new life into the 11-year-old shopping complex, most of which is owned by the city and sits on the edge of San Marcos’ hoped-for downtown.

The two stores are filling space left vacant when a Lowe’s home improvement store closed in 2013. Lowe’s was a major anchor in the shopping center, which sits just off state Route 78 at San Marcos Boulevard.

The city brought in $3.4 million in rent revenues from the complex last year, and the lease agreements with Hobby Lobby and WinCo are set to bump that up to $5.3 million. The combined rent paid by the two stores will be more than double the $834,000 that Lowe’s paid each year.

City Spokeswoman Sarah Macdonald said that’s due to a number of factors, including improved real estate market conditions since the Lowe’s lease was negotiated a dozen or so years ago.

Added to that, when the complex opened in 2004, the city owned the land, but Lowe’s owned the building. After Lowe’s moved out in 2013, San Marcos bought the large structure for roughly $4.5 million.

Being in the landlord business gives the city an additional revenue stream to pay for city services and operations.

“Creekside Marketplace is a testament to the… entrepreneurial spirit that makes the city unique,” Macdonald said.

The San Marcos unveilings come as both national chains are growing.

Last year, the privately held, family-owned Hobby Lobby opened 68 craft and home stores, and hopes to open 70 new stores this year, company spokesman Zack Higbee said last week. That’s more than twice the number of stores Hobby Lobby opened in the prior four years, from 2010 through 2013.

In all, the company has 666 stores, including 31 in California. The roughly 60,000-square-foot North County location is Hobby Lobby’s second store in the county; the first opened a La Mesa site in May. Higbee said the company also plans to open in Chula Vista, and is looking at other sites in the county.

Hobby Lobby typically sets up in existing spaces close to retail cores, Higbee said. The old Lowe’s site, he said, “allowed us to be in a large center that was well-located in the market.”

The Oklahoma-based company, owned by a Christian family, made headlines after it sued over an Affordable Care Act requirement that employers cover contraceptives for women. In June 2014, the Supreme Court sided with the company, finding that small, privately held corporations can hold religious objections under federal law.

Hobby Lobby employs more than 15,000 people nationwide, and its stores are closed on Sundays. Individual outlets generally hire between 30 to 50 employees, from cashiers to custom framers. Higbee declined to say roughly how many workers have full-time status, but said full time workers start at $15.24 an hour. Part-timers get $10.26 an hour.

At the still-under-reconstruction WinCo Foods next door, the company is looking to hire roughly 130 employees. WinCo is an employee-owned company, and workers who qualify are eligible for stock options after one year of employment. (Applications can be found at wincofoods.com.)

At WinCo — founded in 1967 under the name “Waremart” — customers bag their own purchases. The store doesn’t take credit cards (debit cards are fine) and the chain generally doesn’t do mass advertising or weekly circulars. Most stores are open 24 hours a day.

Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, WinCo has 102 stores in eight western states and opens about eight or nine new stores a year, said Michael Read, vice president of public and corporate affairs.

And while they have long been in California, the roughly 90,000 square-foot San Marcos site is the company’s first in San Diego County; the nearest store is in Temecula.

San Diego County is “an area that we had been looking at for a long time,” Read said.

“It’s a major metro, and we had no presence there,” Read said. “We had been looking for opportunities, and finally found one that worked.”

Usually, WinCo owns the building. Only roughly 10 percent of the sites — including San Marcos — are in leased buildings.